Three years of conversations, encounters, laughs and sharing in many different places, ignoring borders every time it was possible to do so. The photos, words, and short clips that make this video all came together through the musical magic of Yusif Tahiru, Alessandro di Francesco and Simone Ndiaye, members of the Piccola Orchestra di Tor Pignattara and the video editing eagerness of our colleague Jenny Allsopp with footage by Mortezza Hosseini and Act Real. The music featured is an original song written, composed and recorded by  The song is based on the findings of the research project.

A key refrain throughout the research project has been how important technology is to how we relate to each other, but also in communicating the messages of our research to a wider audience. As Semhar Haile, one of the project’s young researchers put it at our conference last week:

we don’t just want to make lots of reports and papers that no-one will read!

We asked the young people in this video to share insights into their everyday lives as unaccompanied young people coming of age in Europe, the joys and the challenges, and also into their experiences of working with us on the research project.

Most of the clips are from the UK team, but the video also features contributions from friends and colleagues in other parts of Europe, including Italy but also Belgium and France.

More video outputs to follow. For as another young person put it, ‘the findings of this research are too important to sit on paper alone…’

We hope you agree.

Check our resources to find out more about our project and findings.